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Let me rephrase here:

I was saying that your goal is to have your opponent make the biggest mistake they will. When they have odds, their biggest mistake would be folding. When they don't have odds, their biggest mistake would be calling. (This excludes any raising options).

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One small (but important, IMO) amendment which is they could still not be getting odds to call, and you'd still rather have them fold than call due to their equity, and your potential reverse implied odds. At least, I think what that AA example in the book is driving at.

I'm just thinking this out, so I actually may have it wrong. Whenever you're ahead but not a lock, your opponent by definition has some equity. So, you are hoping they'll call when they make a bigger mistake by calling than the equity you give up, and you want them to fold when they give up more pot equity than it costs them to call your bet (in terms of their new pot equity, I guess).

I'm not sure exactly what that means from a theory standpoint, but it seems like it should factor into the upcoming REM discussion.

In Theory of Poker, Sklansky talked about optimal bluffing frequency being such that no matter what, your opponent had the same negative expectation. I wonder if there's something related in terms of bet sizing where the optimal (HU) theoretical bet size would be equal to an amount that caused your opponent to have the same cost whether they called or folded.

Of course in practice, you'd like to have them call and have it be worse for them than what they give up by folding, but maybe it's an interesting theory question, anyway.